Rain brings relief from high temperatures, but some headaches to local merchants with power outages and traffic lights not working

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While locals celebrated the early arrival of the monsoon season and relief from high summer temperatures, multiple thunderstorms resulted in power outages three consecutive days in the midtown tourist area and a muddy track for quarter horse racing over the weekend.

Traffic lights were knocked out at several key intersections.

"It's been a a separate area every time," Ruidoso's Interim Fire Chief Cody Thetford said Monday. "This morning they had another little issue with a tree on Carrizo Canyon. It's just a matter of the wind, rain and the trees and the power line. It's nothing to cause concern. It's the weather.

"They're working on it," he said of a crew from the Public Service Company of New Mexico, commonly called PNM.

"It's nothing that anybody has done," the chief said. "People have to understand that. Mother Nature is lightning, water, rain and mud and there is nothing we can do except what we can to get it back on."

The fire department only is involved when the first report comes in about a tree hitting a power line, Thetford said.

"Once we get the trees off the lines and get PNM on scene, it's a matter of trying to replace damage lines and power poles," he said. "That takes time. They really are doing a great job. they were there at the same time we got there, less than five minutes."

Meteorologist Andy Church with the Albuquerque office of the National Weather Service said the storms pumped up the monthly precipitation total for June.

"The 30-year average for June in Ruidoso is 1.64 inches," he said. "So far through Saturday, you've seen 2.06 inches. The Sunday total isn't in this and it still is almost a half inch above the monthly average. That's significant."

June often is an extremely dry month that punctuates the annual wildfire season before the monsoon hits.

Whether the thunderstorms signal the early arrival of the summer monsoon is a conclusion still being debated among national weather service staff, Church said. To him, it's difficult to argue it is not an early arrival.

"It really is the monsoon starting early due in a large part to our transition from El Nino (warmer current circulation) to La Nina (cooler currents)," Church said. "Lots of changes are going on in the eastern Pacific Ocean and those changes are basically giving us an early monsoon."

The El Nino in the winter was the second strongest on record, he said, but the impacts were farther north than typical.

"We're transitioning from warmer than average sea surface temperatures, which is the El Nino, to cooler than average right along the equator," Church said. "The atmosphere reacts to that transition and the thunderstorms that develop near the equator impact our subtropical highs, so that typically has given us an early monsoon."

An early arrival of the monsoon doesn't have any significant effect on its departure date, he said.

"Generally, once it sets in, it will stay in place at least through mid-September," Church said. "The last few years, it's been hanging around a little longer. When it starts doesn't have much to do with when it ends."

Church said typical precipitation readings in the Ruidoso area were running from one to three inches each heavy storm day, especially in higher elevations. After a dryer Wednesday, the storms should return to the area each afternoon beginning Thursday and through the weekend, he said.

A spokesman from PNM supplied details about the three power outages. On Saturday, 241 customers were affected within the boundaries of Cree Meadow Drive, Hollywood Subdivision, Sudderth Drive to Paradise Canyon and Main Street west of Malone Road from 12:13 p.m. to 4:31 p.m. from trees hitting power lines. On Sunday, power was out from 12:13 p.m. to 2:31 p.m. within the same area affecting 3,955 customers because of a tree hitting a power line. On Monday, the power company reported that 7,622 customers were affected within the boundaries of Sierra Blanca Trail, New Mexico Highway 48 (Sudderth Drive), Gavilan Canyon and Spotted Owl Road from 10:12 a.m. to 10:20 a.m., when tree trimmers dropped a tree branch on a power line.